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The Stolen Child
The Stolen Child
Jan 14, 2026 8:13 AM

Author:Keith Donohue

The Stolen Child

Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped by fairy changelings living in the dark forest near his home - ageless beings whose secret community is threatened by encroaching modern life. They give Henry a new name, Aniday, and the gift of agelessness - now and forever, he will be seven years old.

The group has left another child in Henry's place. This changeling boy, who has morphed himself into Henry's duplicate, must adjust to a new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano, and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that he is an impostor.

As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world.

Reviews

A welcome addition to the field of contemporary fantasy...sparklingly quirky.. wistfully elegiac...Overall it is a gently redemptive parable about becoming oneself

—— Scotland on Sunday

Keith Donohue evokes the otherworldly with humor and the ordinary with wonder. The Stolen Child is unsentimental and vividly imagined. I enjoyed it immensely

—— Audrey Niffenegger

A remarkably deep and strange read

—— Arena

Remarkably accomplished

—— Guardian

Utterly absorbing...Impressive...Beautiful...A luminous and thrilling novel about our humanity

—— Washington Post

A wonderful, fantasy-laden debut...a novel of great power and sadness

—— Newsweek

An unusual and innovative story

—— The Works

A classic. The Adrian Mole diaries are thoroughly subversive. A true hero for our time

—— Richard Ingrams

Adrian Mole is one of literature's great underachievers; his tragedy is that he knows it and the sadness of this undercuts the humour and makes us laugh not until, but while, it hurts

—— Daily Mail

The funniest person in the world

—— Caitlin Moran

moving, funny and shocking all at once, an almost perfect description of the empty highs and crashing lows of addiction

—— The Telegraph

Shappi Khorsandi’s debut novel, Nina is Not OK, is a moreish read...Shappi’s writing is raw and connective...

—— Gemma Cairney, THE POOL

Compelling debut novel. Nina is ... a vibrant and lovable character. Relentless in her actions, her inner monologues are full of warmth and w uses her comedy skills to great effect in her debut.

—— Irish Times

A brilliant debut

—— Dawn O'Porter

a powerful book and a cautionary tale... it's also a touching celebration of human determination in the overcoming of adversity.

—— Press Association

Darkly funny debut

—— Radio Times

Funny and warm, heartbreaking too. Impressive debut!

—— Claire Allan

emotional, raw, deeply moving and…funny too

—— The Scotsman

...a really rather good YA crossover ... while Khorsandi's novel tackles some pretty big subjects, it does so while making you laugh out loud

—— Metro

I really couldn’t put this book down. It’s not just for young people but if you have a teenage daughter, please make her read it.

—— The Sun

I am loving Shappi Khorsandi's Nina is Not OK, she is making me care about 'Nina' so much that I get anxious on her behalf

—— Jenny Eclair

Thematically taut and compulsively paced.

—— Edmund Gordon , Sunday Times

A very good novel of anxiety, embarrassment and also, somehow, the depths of Englishness.

—— Evening Standard

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

—— Literary Review

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

—— Penguin

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

—— Rachel Kushner

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

—— Mirza Waheed

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

—— Bernardine Evaristo

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

—— Independent on Sunday

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

—— New Yorker

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

—— Cressida Connolly , The Spectator

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

—— Mark Damazer , New Statesman

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

—— Simon Heffer , Daily Telegraph

A novel offering more hope

—— Daisy Goodwin , Daily Mail

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

—— Ann Treneman , The Times

Masterly

—— Anna Murphy
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